Browsing by Subject "Judicial behavior"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

A moral psychological primary source analysis of Brown v. Board of Education
(2017-12-06) Hardee, Benjamin Dawson; Jacobsohn, Gary J., 1946-; Powe, Lucas; Perry, HW; Gawronski, Bertram
This work applies the social intuitionist psychological model of moral judgment to explain the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision-making process. Based on an examination of the available Brown primary source material–––conference notes, interchamber and private memoranda, missives to private individuals, written brainstorms, and clerk recollections–––this work argues that most of the justices’ decision-making in Brown is captured by the model and associated psychological phenomena. The analysis clarifies Brown’s constitutional holding and the nature of the constitutional violation and harm the justices intended to proscribe. The work concludes that Brown has a consequentialist, not a deontological or colorblind, provenance and purpose.
High-end demand : markets for legal services and pressure for judicial autonomy in urban China
(2015-05) Kinkel, Jonathan Josef; Brinks, Daniel M., 1961-; Hurst, William, 1975-; Elkins, Zachary; Maclachlan, Patricia; Perry, H.W.
Most scholars of comparative judicial politics suggest that judicial autonomy emerges from various forms of democratic competition or from a need to assuage the concerns of those investing capital in countries controlled by authoritarian regimes. In an authoritarian political system where the Party-State has historically sought to monopolize control over judicial selection and promotion, how can we explain reforms that increase the degree of merit-based competition, the statutory basis of written judicial opinions, the level of court transparency, and overall judicial autonomy in courts? Challenging prevailing theories regarding the relationship between economic development and rule of law, I argue that the particular patterns of local variation in judicial autonomy across urban China can be traced in part to differences in local markets for professional legal services: if qualified, mid-ranking judges can easily quit their jobs and find lucrative local employment as lawyers, court leaders are more likely to strategically reform promotion mechanisms in an attempt to retain these young—yet nonetheless, experienced—judges. These findings are based on nearly 15 months of in-country fieldwork, conducted between 2012-2014, that included 49 interviews with judges across 3 different case study cities: Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. Employing the subnational comparative method, this article not only builds theory regarding the emergence of rule of law in authoritarian states, it also offers new empirical detail regarding the promotion, performance evaluation, and behavior of judges in urban China.
Weak review, strong court : judicial institutions and influence in the US and France
(2023-05-05) Blass, Abby (Ph. D in government); Brinks, Daniel M., 1961-; Jacobsohn, Gary; Elkins, Zachary; Theriault, Sean; Perez-Liñan, Aníbal
This dissertation explores differences in the willingness of high court judges to use their authority of constitutional review to participate in national policymaking. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of judicial decisions invalidating national laws over thirty years in the United States and France, I show how, contrary to conventional wisdom, judges with weaker forms of review in political systems that offer straightforward ways to displace judicial opinions show greater willingness to review and to invalidate national laws, over a broader range of policy domains, than their counterparts with strong form review in fragmented political environments that offer judges the “last word”. Drawing on institutional and strategic insights about judicial decision making, I show that judges perceive and experience the costs of exceeding the tolerance of political actors with the power to curtail their institutional autonomy and authority, and over time they learn to balance the immediate cost of losing a discrete policy battle versus the systemic cost of losing their institutional capacity to contribute to contemporary policy debates. My results show that, counterintuitively, giving judges the ‘last word’ on matters of policy may be counterproductive to the project of judicial empowerment, and the contrast in judicial styles with weak and strong review suggests that scholars must be more nuanced in evaluating judicial power, looking beyond the more confrontational and disruptive interventions of the Supreme Court as the standard model of judicial influence, to the more cooperative and consensual engagement of the French Constitutional Council.